The Federal Government has said it will borrow more money to fund critical infrastructure, saying Nigeria would not make any meaningful headway in its quest for development if it doesn’t borrow more.
This was contained in a press briefing made by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed in Abuja on Thursday, February 25.
The Minister defended the necessity for the government to continue to borrow to provide basic infrastructural facilities saying that the country will degenerate economically if it stops borrowing.
According to her, “There is a lot of sensitivity in Nigeria about the level of borrowing by the government and it is not misplaced. And I said earlier that the level of borrowing is not unreasonable, it is not high. The problem we have is that of revenue. So, what we need to do is to increase revenue to be able to enhance our debt to GDP obligation capacity.
If we say we will not borrow and therefore not build rails and major infrastructure until our revenue rises enough, then, we will regress as a country. We will be left behind, we won’t be able to improve our business environment and our economy will not grow. So, it is a decision that every government has to take.
Our assessment is that we need to borrow to build our major infrastructure. We just need to make sure that when we borrow, we are applying the borrowing to specific major infrastructure that will enhance the business environment in this country. We also have to make sure that when we are choosing the projects, we are choosing carefully the ones that will enhance business environment so that more revenue yields come into the treasuries of the country.”
